Venue: Hanshin
Distance: 2000m
Value: ¥651,000,000 (about US$4,200,000)
The Osaka Hai is the first Group 1 middle distance test of the year for Japan’s older horses, aged four-years-old and up and takes place at right-handed Hanshin. The race dates back to 1957 when it was contested over 1800m – it moved to 2000m in 1972 – but it only became a Group 1 race as recently as 2017. Between times, it was a key lead-up race to the G1 Tenno Sho Spring and was a Group 2 event from 1984, known as the Sankei Osaka Hai.
Kitasan Black won that first Group 1 edition but the honour roll was already prestigious even as a Group 2 contest, having been won by champions such as Katsuragi Ace, Tokai Teio, Mejiro McQueen, Air Groove, Meisho Samson and Orfevre. In 2025, Bellagio Opera became the first horse to win the race in back-to-back years.
Clash Of The Derby Winners
The past two winners of the G1 Tokyo Yushun, the five-year-old Danon Decile and the year younger Croix Du Nord, are first-up for the year and both camps will have designs on their hero being the top older horse in Japan this year. Each went offshore in 2025 with Danon Decile winning the Dubai Sheema Classic, then running fifth in a messy G1 Juddmonte International Stakes at York, and Croix Du Nord winning the G3 Prix du Prince d’Orange before a dismal 14th in the G1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. How they run here will likely determine which direction they head this time around.
The Derby winners have met once before, in the G1 Japan Cup last November when there was a length between them: Danon Decile was third that time behind Calandagan, with Croix Du Nord fourth.
Unknown Factors After Danon’s Dubai Sidestep
Danon Decile was not even supposed to be running in this race. Shogo Yasuda’s stable star was set for the G1 Dubai Sheema Classic, a race he won last year, but was rerouted to Hanshin because of the war in the Gulf region. Being one week later than the Dubai race should not be an issue, and Calandagan’s victory in Danon Decile’s absence emphasised the quality of last year’s Japan Cup form.
However, Danon Decile is stepping down in distance to 2000m for the first time since the G3 Keisei Hai, which he won, in January 2024. And this is also his first time racing at Hanshin.
Will Take’s Tactics Make The Difference?
Yutaka Take is a master of pace and his expertise when racing in front has brought wins in this race for Kitasan Black and Jack D’Or – he is the most successful Osaka Hai jockey of all-time with six wins. That pace management could be a big factor in the outcome again because the Osaka Hai is run on Hanshin’s inner course, where the home straight is short and front-runners are often hard to catch. In each of the past 10 years, at least one horse that turned for home in the first three has finished in the top three.
Can Lebensstil Buck History?
Four-time Group 2 winner Lebensstil has had three attempts at winning a Group 1 and each time he has come up well short. Not only that, he is known to have a tricky temperament and seems averse to travelling far from Miho training centre, even to western Japan; all his wins have been local to him at Tokyo or Nakayama.
But that hasn’t dissuaded champion jockey Christophe Lemaire from taking the reins again for the first time since January of last year. Lemaire has won two from four on the six-year-old, and Lebensstil heads into this race in good form, having won the G2 Nakayama Kinen on March 1. But no horse has ever won the Nakayama Kinen and the Osaka Hai in the same year.
Two Ecoro Runners With A Chance
Owner Masatoshi Haramura’s green, yellow and red silks have become a common sight in recent times, and he enjoyed success with his Ecoro prefixed horses, notably the jump champion Ecoro Duel, but he has never had a JRA Group 1 win on the flat.
He has two interesting candidates on Sunday: last year’s fourth Ecoro Waltz clearly likes Hanshin, having been second to Jantar Mantar there in the 2023 G1 Asahi Hai Futurity; Ecoro Dinos is progressing up the ladder and has his first Group 1 start off a first-up third in the G2 Kyoto Kinen last time. ∎
